Deep Skepticism on ID Number
Since Prime Minister Fumio Kishida started leading his administration in the fall of 2021, one of the primary domestic political agenda has been introduction and prevalence of new national identification card called My Number card. While the issue seemed to have reached a culmination when the Diet passed the bill for scrapping health insurance card and integrate it with My Number card, a lot of errors over the issuance or operation of the cards were revealed after the law was enacted, causing broad public discredit on the government. It is possible that My Number can be fatal for Kishida administration. My Number was introduced under Shinzo Abe administration in 2013, providing the people with twelve-digit identification number to make administrative procedures such as taxation or social security efficient. While the government distributed the number to every citizen, My Number card did not prevail as much as the government expected. Although the government hoped the number to be...